Songs from the Red Box; Taylor alumna Angela Sheik talks about her rising musical career

Songs from the Red Box; Taylor alumna Angela Sheik talks about her rising musical career

By Daniel MorrillPublished: Oct 05, 2012

1999 Taylor alumna Angela Sheik says her passion for music grew from experimenting with an out-of-tune piano and a second-hand flute when she was growing up near Buffalo, New York. Years later Sheik was formally trained in classical music at Taylor and graduated in 1999 with a degree in Music Education and a minor in Flute Performance.

She spent time teaching music to junior high students in Philadelphia from 2000-2004 before joining forces with Larisa Forest to form the band Ange and Ris. The two spent time creating their own unique style before releasing the ten-track album Not Me in 2007.

After the multi-talented musicians parted ways in 2009, Sheik released her own EP, Pappachappa. She began to further experiment with looping, recording short segments with different instruments and playing them over each other, while she played in Flagstaff, Arizona, with the Angela Sheik Trio from 2010-2011.

Sheik officially launched her solo career in 2011 when she released the EP Songs From the Red Box. The album was a collection of five of her live looping performances, and it and immediately challenged the limits of what a single performer can achieve. Using a loop pedal to blend all of her talents together, Sheik layers her voice with a keyboard, flute, autoharp, theramin and synths to create a uniquely personal body of sound.

Her talent with a loop pedal was recognized worldwide when Sheik won 2011 USA BOSS National Looping Championship in Los Angeles, and was later a finalist at the World Championships in Frankfurt, Germany. Critics have raved about Sheik’s ability to connect with and play to the needs of each specific live audience, and this year she was named the World Café Live CREAM Standout Performer. Sheik continues to perform live around the country while experimenting with and molding the art of looping.